Open Source E-Learning: November 8th, 2002
By
Paul Stacey
With
revenues and profitability on everyone's mind its interesting to ponder the
impact open source e-learning will have on the marketplace.
The
open-source movement traces its roots back to the early days of software
development. In the 60's and early 70's nearly all software was in the public
domain and open for constant revision and review. But by the 1980's this had
changed and nearly all software was proprietary or closed-source and its
underlying code copyrighted.
But
many felt that closed source code hampered the free flow of ideas and ultimately
delivered bad software. In the closed model of development only a very few
programmers can see the source code. Improvements by other programmers must be
done blindly as add-ons.
The
basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read,
redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software
evolves. Improvements, adaptations, and bug fixes happen rapidly at a speed much
faster than conventional development.
In
1984 MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman quit his job in academia to start
the Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org.
He devised a clever legal device known as the General Public License. Software
under this license is in the public domain and any derivative works that use a
piece of it's code must also be in the public domain.
Apache
http://www.apache.org, which
runs over 50% of the world's web servers and Linux http://www.linux.org
the free, UNIX-like operating system are examples of successful open source
software initiatives.
Open
source isn't just for software. One of the more intriguing open source
initiatives these days is the world's first open-source consumer product
OpenCola http://www.opencola.org.
Unlike Pepsi and Coke which jealously guard their secret formulas, the makers of
OpenCola give their recipe away on their web site. Not only that they encourage
people to make their own and modify and improve the recipe at will. Modified
formulas must also be freely available to the public
Last
year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced several open
source e-learning initiatives which generated a lot of buzz.
The
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) project will make all MIT course materials that are
used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects available
on the web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. This really shook
up the plans of many universities throughout the world who had begun to consider
the outreach and revenue potential of making their courses available online. If
MIT makes it available for free who can compete?
Using
an 11 million dollar grant from the Mellon and Hewlett foundation phase one of
MIT's OpenCourseware project opened up a couple of weeks ago with a sampling of
32 classes in 17 departments available on their site http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
Over the next 8 years MIT expects to have 2,000 courses on the OCW site.
After
reviewing several of the courses I'm struck by just how far this falls short of
the potential for e-learning. A syllabus and course notes online are the lowest
common denominator for e-learning - what some disparagingly call shovelware. But
MIT president Charles Vest has been careful to set expectations. At the press
conference announcing OCW he said, "Let me be clear: We are not providing
an MIT education on the Web. We are providing our core materials that are the
infrastructure that undergirds an MIT education. Real education requires
interaction."
Faculty
members at MIT, as well as other universities, are concerned with their
intellectual property. Its particularly interesting to read the legal notices
that go along with the OCW courseware. The course materials "may be used,
copied, distributed, translated, and modified, but only for non-commercial
educational purposes". All uses must be attributed to MIT OCW and to the
original faculty author. Certain materials, such as photos, graphics, or other
objects cannot be reused as they are restricted by licensing agreements between
MIT and third party suppliers.
While
OCW has proven to be a remarkable public relations initiative it clearly is not
about online degree programs. Its not even about online courses which students
can audit or enroll in. OCW simply puts MIT education content online and makes
it available. Whether anyone wants it remains to be seen.
MIT
also launched the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) last year. http://web.mit.edu/oki
OKI is defining an open and extensible architecture for learning technology
specifically targeted to the needs of the higher education community.
OKI
Application Programming Interfaces (API's) specify how the components of a
learning technology environment communicate with each other and with other
campus systems. The big value add of OKI is API supported interoperability which
allows the components of the learning technology environment to be developed and
updated independently of one another. Advantages of this include:
-
custom integration of different learning
technologies to meet diverse teaching and learning requirements (flexible
components instead of all-in-one suites or comprehensive systems )
-
lower long term cost of software ownership as
single components can be replaced or upgraded without upgrading the whole
system
-
a more stable, reliable, and scalable learning
technology solution
OKI is in part a response to the massive in-house
development efforts of many campuses. It seems some campuses have written more
lines of code to integrate their campus systems (student information, finance,
registrar, etc.) with a vendor's course management system than there are lines
of code in the vendor's system itself.
In addition to making freely available these Java
written API's components of learning management software written by MIT
(Stellar), Stanford University (Course Work), and the University of Michigan
(Chef) will be made available as open source code that can be freely
incorporated into learning system components built by universities or by
commercial software vendors.
OKI takes care to emphasize that this does not
imply it is distributing and supporting a "free LMS" as a low cost
alternative to commercial products. The open source software provided by OKI is
not complete and does not come with a warranty, training, implementation
guidelines, support services, a bug fix process, a help desk, or ongoing
upgrades. Rather than a full scale production implementation the OKI software is
a good way to demonstrate "proof-of-concept" efforts.
The goal of OKI is to allow everyone to focus
their development activity on creating pedagogically effective tools rather than
on reinventing basic services or figuring out how to integrate them. For more
information check out the OKI white papers and case studies at: http://web.mit.edu/oki/proj/edu2002/index.html
Of course MIT isn't the only player in the area
of open source e-learning. Those of you interested in creating a learning
portal ought to check out uPortal, an open source set of Java classes and XML/XSL
documents that university and college IT departments use to produce a campus
portal. uPortal is a collaborative development project shared between several
Java in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG) member institutions and a
number of universities, including Princeton, Pepperdine, Yale and Columbia. See http://mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/
Another popular open source application being
used for e-learning is ZOPE, an open source application server, specializing in
content management, portals, and custom applications. http://www.zope.org
Capilano
College's Continuing Education program in Online Learning
offers a Computer and Technology course covering the
use of Zope and Python (an interactive programming language) for education along
with network administration courses for integrating open content and open source
into your network.
In
the market-driven world of e-learning, open source may seem counterintuitive.
Will open source and business opportunities coexist? I think so. Red Hat has
developed a whole business around LInux. Open source may in fact provide a
catalyst for commercial development by providing an approach for specialized
products.
For
open source e-learning to have an impact a community of e-learning technologists
must rally around open source e-learning initiatives and invest the time and
resources in modifying source code and redistributing improvements. If this
occurs open source e-learning could drive the industry forward through
innovation.
Paul
Stacey, is an e-learning specialist in corporate and higher education. Paul
works in Simon Fraser University's eLearning Innovation Centre (eLINC). A
frequent e-learning speaker and workshop leader Paul is interested in the use of
e-learning to support lifelong learning and the development of e-learning as an
economic sector locally, nationally, and internationally. Contact:
Paul Stacey
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